In the days when "No Irish Need Apply," my maternal grandmother, Margaret McCabe Ackerson, was lucky to find work scrubbing office floors to support her five children. My aunt remembers sitting as a little gift on the curb in front of their East 29th Street, Manhattan tenement until her widowed mother came home around midnight. This was not the American dream Margaret's father, … [Read more...] about The Irish Scrubwoman
History Archives
Proudly We Serve
September 11 has become this generation's "Day of Infamy." The terrorist attacks forever changed the way we live, and have made our daily lives more difficult. A secure environment can no longer be presumed. Some post 9/11 changes, however, have been positive. Is there anyone who doesn't now have a greater appreciation for our police and firefighters, or greater respect for … [Read more...] about Proudly We Serve
President Reagan Remembered
From Ballyporeen to the White House, Niall O'Dowd looks at President Reagan's Irish background, and recalls an interview with the President's brother, Neil. "Today I come back to you as a descendant of people who were buried here in pauper's graves." Thus did President Ronald Wilson Reagan announce himself when he visited the Irish village of Ballyporeen Co. Tipperary. It was … [Read more...] about President Reagan Remembered
Chile’s Irish Flavor
By Nancy Griffin, Contributor
Nancy Griffin travels to Chile and finds a beautiful country still celebrating its Irish founding father. Chile is a long, narrow, mountainous, beautiful country on the Pacific Ocean, its tip so far south that the last water to be spied from the mainland is the Straits of Magellan and the next landfall after the islands just below them is Antarctica. The Chilean national … [Read more...] about Chile’s Irish Flavor
The Not So Great Escape
Ten years after robbers emptied an armored security van of $7.4 million at gunpoint, a former I.R.A. member has admitted in a memoir that he masterminded the heist. ℘℘℘ Sam Millar rues the fact that he is unlikely to set foot in New York ever again. He spent 16 years in the city, saw his four children born there, set up a successful comic book business in Queens and blew it all … [Read more...] about The Not So Great Escape